A Branch In Winter Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

She kicks her heels up to the sky
and gently tiptoes on the sun.
In verdant hues, she captures eye,
drunk on the new day just begun.
She glistens with the morning rain,
smiling bright with the breath of spring
and blossoms with the sweet refrain:
Life is such a glorious thing!

Her basket brims with fragrant scent
carried aloft upon the wind.
She wonders where her lover went
and why their ardor had to end.
She leans into the azure height
to seek some shelter from the pain.
Her head is wrapped in golden light.
Emerald eyes are full of rain.

She wraps herself in crimson fire,
trembling slightly from the storm,
the sky her lute, the wind her lyre.
Indian Summer makes her warm.
In chestnut tones, she paints the sky.
Leaves flutter, flutter to the ground.
A scarf of frost covers the eye
as the leaves gather, gather round.

The coldness creeps into her bones.
Her breath is breathing wintered white.
The frightful sound of blue-veined moans
flurries throughout the web of night.
Icicles lace her wearied head.
Her skin is ghostly, fragile, pale.
Her final plaint, and she falls dead
beneath the lace of winter's veil.

Her spine is made of evergreen
in spite of winter's falling snow
crowned with a life like few have seen
or hands of time will ever show.
I trace the echoes of her song.
My heart lifts its excited wing;
and as the seasons roll along:
Life is such a glorious thing!